4 Answers

Is this for home rendering and planning, or are you wanting to do actual plotting of elevations and floor plans? I’d say AutoCAD, but it’s very hard to use with a sharp learning curve. To be honest, you may have hit the nail on the head with SketchUp.

I agree. I’ve used AutoCAD, and it tends to be very difficult, but by far the most widely used and most tool rich. If it’s simple modeling then yes, Google SketchUp is awesome. I just looked for some alternatives that were free. Seems to be a rather empty result set. I say stick with SketchUp.

what are your parameters? How much are you willing to spend? What kind of project?how many projects?

I would recommend Chief Architect, but it’s expensive. Sketchup is inexpensive but not necessarily easy to create documents (plans) with. Autocad is complete overkill, but there are free or cheap alternatives that will work…intellicad, datacad, turbocad. I am a revit user, but it is very expensive and has a long learning curve.